The geopolitics
of diamonds forges unlikely alliances in Africa. Only
some seventy years earlier, German troops had nearly
wiped out the Hereros as a race in Namibia. Now I watched
the descendants of the original German settlers urging
the Herero tribesmen to vote for their Democratic Trunsthale
Alliance. It was a gay, festive atmosphere, with a crowd
of Hereto women, wearing red turbans and long Victorian
dresses, lined up to vote at a polling booth in Namibia's
capital city of Windhoek.

Namibia was still under the firm
control of South Africa, which had administered it since
1915, and the election was clearly sponsored by South
Africa. Nevertheless, it was the first election in Namibia's
history, and considerable efforts had been made to win
the support of chiefs of the Herero and Ovambo tribes,
who constituted the vast majority of the population.
There had been massive rallies, torchlight parades and
tribal festivals staged by the South Africans to encourage
the black population to vote. The South African army
even provided trucks to take the Ovambos from their
rural kraals to the polling booths. During the week-long
election there had also been scattered assassinations
and acts of sabotage attributed to the SWAPO guerrillas.
SWAPO had demanded that blacks in Namibia boycott the
election.

South Africa, in turn, had invited
journalists from all over the world to witness this
extravaganza. The purpose was to demonstrate to the
United Nations, and the media, that SWAPO could not
effectively speak for or control the black population
of Namibia. It was, in short, a contest of terror, and
the measure of success was the percentage of eligible
voters who participated in the election. Those who abstained
voted in effect for SWAPO.

I was told, according to the latest
tally, that nearly 8o percent of the eligible voters
in all of Namibia had cast their vote, which was a resounding
victory for South Africa. Returns coming in from the
rural Ovambo villages close to the Angola border, where
SWAPO guerrillas had their bases, showed that go percent
or more of the Ovambos were voting, despite SWAPO threats
of assassination.

After making the rounds of polling
places in Windhoek, I flew across the Namib desert to
Oranjemund, which is located, as its name implies, at
the mouth of the Orange River. Even though the election
was in its final day, this immaculately clean city was
strangely silent. Unlike Windhoek, there were no boisterous
rallies or blaring sound trucks in the palm-tree-lined
streets. The polling booths were nearly deserted. Although
this was the second largest city in Namibia, with more
than 7,000 eligible Ovambo tribesmen, all the blacks
seemed to be abstaining from the plebiscite. As it turned
out, Oranjernund was the only city in all of Namibia
that had, through its massive abstention, "voted" in
effect for SWAPO.

The difference between Oranjemund
and the rest of Namibia was that it was not under the
control of the South African army. It was, and had been
since its inception in 1936, the private preserve of
De Beers and its wholly owned subsidiary, Consolidated
Diamond Mines. Oppenheimer's father had built the entire
city from scratch after he had obtained exclusive rights
to the adjacent 200 miles of Namibian desert called
the Sperrgebeit, or forbidden zone. Cordoned off from
the rest of Namibia by two barbwire fences, it has continued
to live up to its ominous name. No one, not even army
or government officials, is allowed into the forbidden
zone without the express permission of Oppenheimer's
diamond company.

I was not surprised to find that
De Beers had not cajoled or even encouraged its black
workers in Namibia to vote. Since Namibian diamonds
constituted the single largest source of profits for
De Beers, Oppenheimer had to carefully weigh any intervention
into Namibian politics. Not only the United Nations
but five western powers-the United States, Britain,
England, France and Germany-were demanding that South
Africa relinquish its control over Namibia. The alternatives
that were threatened were United Nations sanctions,
which could include the severing of all telephone, mail,
and air services to South Africa, and conceivably an
oil embargo. Under these circumstances, there was the
distinct possibility that South Africa would yield and
SWAPO would come to power in Namibia. Oppenheimer would
have then to renegotiate his subsidiary~ s concession
to mine the diamonds of the forbidden zone with SWAPO.

I recalled Oppenheimer's confidence
about Namibia. Whether or not he had already established
contacts with alterative governments there, it was understandable
why he would not want to offend gratuitously the leaders
of SWAPO by pressing the diamond workers to vote in
this election. He might have to deal with them in the
foreseeable future for Namibia's diamonds.

The forbidden zone was a world unto
itself. The only means of entering it was the Ernest
Oppenheimer Bridge, which spanned the Orange River frontier
between South Africa and Namibia. Armed guards manned
barricades at both the South African and Namibian ends
of the bridge. Before I was permitted to pass into the
forbidden zone, I had to be met by an escort from the
diamond company and issued a plastic security badge.

Inside the forbidden zone is the
city of Oranjemund, with its own food-producing farms
and reservoirs. The vast mining area runs alongside
the Atlantic Ocean. To enter into the mining area, one
has to insert his plastic security badge into a slot
in the wall and wait for a door to slide open automatically.
The central computer, which opens and closes these passageways,
tracks the comings and goings of everyone in the mining
area. De Beers' helicopters constantly patrol overhead,
and closely monitor the activities of the fishing craft
that pass by in the ocean (even though the enormous
waves would make landing a boat on the beach all but
impossible). Behind the beach, a pack of Alsatian guard
dogs patrol the no-man's-land between the two barbwire
fences. And behind the barbwire fences is the Namib
Desert, one of the most inhospitable areas on earth.
It is made impenetrable by 1,000-foot-high sand dunes
and 120 degree temperatures.

The extraordinary security procedures
are considered necessary in Namibia because what is
recovered from the 200 mile-long beach is not kimberlite
ore but pure gem diamonds, which can be easily pocketed
by anyone. In one small crevice in a rock outcropping,
some 15,000 carats of sparkling diamonds were found
on this beach some years ago.

The mine, if it can be called a
mine, is actually the continental shelf of the Atlantic
Ocean. To get at the richest lodes of diamonds, the
ocean must be literally pushed back and held back long
enough to dig out the diamonds. The mechanism for holding
back the pounding surf is a ten-story high mound, which,
600 feet out in the ocean, runs parallel to the beach.

Standing on this sandy mound, I
looked down into the "mine," which was actually the
exposed floor of the ocean. It was an incredible sight;
a full-scale battle between man and nature.

"You are looking at the largest
construction project in the Southern Hemisphere," observed
Clive Cowley. Cowley had been the editor of Namibia's
leading newspaper, the Windhoek Advertiser; now he was
the chief public affairs officer of De Beers in Namibia.
He pointed to the thousands of workers and machines
below. Giant bulldozers were belching smoke and scraping
the ground with their blades like some kind of prehistoric
animal. Powerful pumps were sucking the water out of
the mining area through hoses as fast as it sprayed
in over the barrier. Ovambo tribesmen, knee-deep in
pools of water, were frantically sweeping the gravel
off outcrops of rock on the ocean's floor as if they
feared that at any moment the barrier might give way,
like a sand castle on a beach, and the ocean would come
flooding in.

In the center of all this activity
was an enormous piece of machinery, more than a football
field in length and two stories high, mounted on caterpillar
tracks. A continuous belt of steel buckets traveled
around it, like cars on a ferris wheel, scooping up
sand at one end and depositing it at the other end.
It was the largest machine I had ever seen.

"That's the bucket wheel excavator,"
Cowley explained. "It cost $3.5 million to build, and
it can move 1,800 tons of sand an hour." The sand must
be stripped away before the workers, called lashers,
can get at the diamond-rich gravel.

The Ovambo tribesmen worked with
their primitive tools in the shadow of this colossal
machine. The contrast between tribal and modern technology
was striking. Ironically,, as Cowley pointed out, it
was the tribesmen, not the multimillion-dollar machine,
who recovered most of the diamonds. These Ovambos had
been recruited to work in the ocean mine in the jungles
of Ovamba land, a thousand miles to the north. According
to Cowley, they usually received eight month contracts
from the diamond company. They would board a Hercules
cargo plane, leaving their families behind on the kraal,
and fly to Oranjemund.

"They have to be literally fought
off the plane," Cowley said. For just sweeping the gravel
from the rocks, they received $200 a month. For driving
trucks and other more skilled jobs, they earned up to
$450 a month. This salary is completely exempt from
taxes. Their own expense for their eight-month stay
at the mines is $22 a month for their dormitory room
and food. "By the time they return to Ovamba land, they
have enough money to buy cattle, land or even a wife,"
Cowley concluded.

Suddenly, a tractor the size of a
locomotive came racing toward us. As it passed, an Ovambo
waved from the cab. He then maneuvered the vehicle precariously
on the edge of the mound, which was only about sixty
feet wide, and dumped a load of dirt on top of it. Cowley
explained that these tractors wage an around-the-clock
battle with the Atlantic Ocean. Waves constantly rip
away the sand, and these tractors, each of which carries
a thirty-five-ton load of sand, constantly fill the
breeches in the barrier. If an opening were not immediately
filled, the ocean would break through and submerge the
entire mine under fifty feet of sea water.

Every day, more than 100 million
pounds of sand and gravel are dug out of the ocean mine.
From the massive moving of the earth and holding back
of the ocean, about two and a half to three pounds of
diamonds are recovered each day. "All this effort, and
more, purely for the vanity of women," Cowley added,
with an edge of irony in his voice. That irony was only
compounded by the fact that De Beers had millions of
dollars invested in advertising to take advantage of
this vanity.

When I viewed the day's catch in
the sorting house, which was that day about 6,ooo carats,
I saw that unlike in Botswana and Lesotho there were
no black or discolored diamonds in the tray. These were
clearly not industrial-grade diamonds, but white, well-formed
gem diamonds.

"These aren't the same sort of diamonds
that come out of a pipe mine," Cowley said. "They have
been pounded by ocean waves for millions of years. The
inferior diamonds have been smashed to bits eons ago.
Only the fittest survive, and these are pure gems."

Pointing to the container of diamonds
that had been recovered from the ocean floor that day,
he continued, "There are probably more pure gems in
that dish than have been recovered today in all the
pipe mines in South Africa combined." Cowley estimated
that this single day's production would bring in over
$1-5 million when they were sold by De Beers in London.

The profits on these Namibian diamonds
were enormous. It cost no more to mine and separate
these gem diamonds than it did for the industrial-grade
diamonds that constituted the bulk of the production
of most other mines. Yet these gems sold for one hundred
times the price of industrial diamonds. From the four-hundred
million dollars in revenues it took in the preceding
year for these Namibian diamonds, De Beers realized
a net profit of more than two hundred million dollars,
making Namibia De Beers' money spinner.

After we left the sorting house,
Cowley took me over to see an extraordinary scrap yard.
It was enclosed by barbwire ; and filled with enough
antique machines to stock a museum. "Once a vehicle
or piece of equipment ever enters the mining area, it
is never allowed to leave," Cowley said. He explained
that this prohibition was necessary in order to prevent
anyone from smuggling diamonds out concealed in a piece
of equipment. Since it was not practical to attempt
to search for an object as small as a diamond, De Beers
simply assigned all the vehicles and machines, when
they became outmoded, to this graveyard.

This tangle of relics encapsulated
the history of the Namibian diamonds. There was, for
example, a train of turn-of-the-century railroad cars
with German markings. "Namibia was a German colony when
diamonds were first found here at the turn of the century,"
Cowley said. He explained that the diamond fields were
then about 100 miles north of Oranjemund. To mine the
diamonds, the Germans had built Teutonic towns at Pomona
and Kolinanskop, complete with beerhalls and skittle
alleys. "The Germans had the blacks sweep the streets
every day to keep the sand out of their houses. When
they could no longer find ;my diamonds on the beaches
they abandoned these towns to the desert. It has become
a ghost town; the beerhall is now filled with sand,
sand comes halfway tip the walls inside the houses..."

There was also an ominous looking
World War 11 battle tank with a British insignia on
it. A huge steel blade had been welded in front of the
gun turret. "De Beers converted these tanks to bulldozers
after the war," Cowley continued, "because there was
no bridge across the Orange River then and it was next
to impossible to float heavy equipment across on barges."
It took until the mid nineteen-fifties before the bridge
was built.

Since De Beers' geologist found
that most of the diamond lodes were on the ocean floor,
a method had to be devised of holding the ocean back,
Cowley explained. Assisted by oceanographers at the
University of Capetown, engineers initially experimented
with the idea of altering the ocean's current so that
it would rip up the beach and redeposit the sand farther
from the shoreline. This would create a natural barrier
behind which the workers could sweep the diamonds out
from the bedrock. To shift the direction of the ocean
current, they dug a channel across the beach. Unfortunately,
the ocean refused to follow the predicted course, and
the engineers gave up on the attempt to harness the
sea.

Next, the engineers attempted to
erect an earthen dam in the ocean at low tide and cover
it with a gigantic canvas tarpaulin before the tide
returned. They postulated that the tarpaulin would prevent
the ocean from dissolving the dam. Working in a rising
tide, it took nearly two hours to lash down this cover.
Less than an hour later, the waves ripped the tarpaulin
to shreds.

The De Beers engineers had to return
to their drawing boards. Finally, in the early 1960s,
they came up with a system for building a series of
dams that would be replenished with sand from the mine
as fast as the ocean could strip it away. "After a good
deal of trial and error it worked Cowley concluded.

Leaving the mining area, we had
to pass through a long narrow building. Along one wall
were large mirrors, which, Cowley explained, were two-way
glasses through which security guards observed everyone
passing through. At the end of one maze-like corridor,
there was a turnstile that led to two closed doors,
side by side. We went through the turnstile, waited;
then a buzzer sounded, and the door on the right opened.
"If the other door had opened, you would have had to
undergo both an X-ray and body search," Cowley said.
He explained that the selection of who gets searched
is completely at random. It would be medically dangerous
to subject workers to constant dosages of X-rays, therefore
only a small percentage of those who passed out of the
mining area each day were actually searched. "Everyone
from Harry Oppenheimer to Ovambo workers have to pass
through that turnstile, and they never know which door
is going to open," Cowley added, as he again inserted
our security badges into the slot at the end of the
passageway.

The last door buzzed opened, and
a moment later we were walking down a suburban street
in Oranjemund. The transition from the moonscape-like
mine to the familiarity of the modern city was somewhat
unsettling.

We dined that evening with a group
of De Beers executives at the Hexen Kcssel. The decor
and cuisine were meant to evoke an "Old World" European
spirit, but, like everything else in Oranjemund, the
restaurant had been designed and built by De Beers.
As far as the De Beers executives were concerned, the
Namibian diamond mining operation was a reality that
had been created by De Beers. If a revolutionary government
ever forced De Beers to relinquish the concession, one
executive suggested that mines would be flooded by the
ocean in a matter of months, and no more diamonds ever
would be recovered. So the forces of nationalism in
Namibia would have to come to terms with the diamond
cartel.